So many questions, so little time

I realize that I never answered any of your questions yesterday. It's a very long story, so I'll try to fill you in, without doing the whole shebang.

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The biggie, of course, when do we get our babe?

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Nobody can answer that. It all depends on the government, or more appropriately, who happens to be behind the official counter when you go to get forms / fill in forms / hand in forms, and whether or not they've had their coffee yet that morning. Basically that's what it comes down to. Tantrums won't help anything. So, yet again, it's a Waiting Game.

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Another factor is that apparently South Africa does not have a working relationship with Eastern Europe for adoptions into the country. What that means, is that Robin and I will have a social worker here, who works for an approved agency. We do everything with them, then they correspond with an American agency, and then the American agency corresponds with the Kaszaki agency, and we pay every agency their fees in their currency. It's a very long process.

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But even before that happens, it's The Screening Process. Which is basically where the social worker (in our case, Sheri) and her team decide whether or not we will make good adoptive parents, and whether or not we would be able to care for the child in all aspects - emotionally, intellectually, financially, etc.

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From start to finish, it could take anything between one year to two years before we become parents.

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What else?

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What I can tell you, is that I feel we are in very competent hands, with our social worker. She is friendly, kind, compassionate, knows the right people, comes highly recommended, etc. What I like most is that she's straight as an arrow. She tells it like it is. So, you don't get half-baked stories with her, leaving you wondering what the answer to your question really is.

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But, I really need to distance myself from it a bit. I feel suffocated by all the "if's and but's". And if you know me, I can't tolerate moping. Which is what I've been doing since the meeting. Without admitting it, I was sort-of expecting adoption to be a Quick Fix. And it's definitely not.

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And besides - why mope when I have so much to be grateful for? I have to consciously remind myself that I am too blessed to be stressed. Which should make me feel a bit better. But where the rubber meets the road - I'm still feeling really woe is me. I want to shake myself and say "lift your lip up off the floor, before you trip over it!" It just seems my inner reserves are spent.

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BUT on the other hand - I really believe that even this harrowing time will leave me more reliant on God. And if that's the only thing that comes from this, then that is sufficient for me. If after all this, we are still childless, I am determined that we will not be faithless.

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It's incredible to me how God sends me the right passages to read, just when I need it most. It reminds me that He really does know every thought that I think, even before I think it. I am greatly encouraged by this passage from Next Door Saviour by Max Lucado:-

Learning to Trust the Master

A man and his dog are in the same car. The dog howls bright-moon-in-the-middle-of-the-night caterwauling howls. The man pleads, promising a daily delivery of dog biscuit bouquets if only the hound will hush. After all, it’s only a car wash. Never occurred to him—ahem, to me—that the car wash would scare my dog. But it did. Placing myself in her paws, I can see why. A huge, noisy machine presses toward us, pounding our window with water, banging against the door with brushes. Duck! We’re under attack.

“Don’t panic. The car wash was my idea.” “I’ve done this before.” “It’s for our own good.” Ever tried to explain a car wash to a canine? Dog dictionaries are minus the words brush and detail job. My words fell on fallen flaps. Nothing helped. She just did what dogs do; she wailed.

Actually, she did what we do. Don’t we howl? Not at car washes perhaps but at hospital stays and job transfers. Let the economy go south or the kids move north, and we have a wail of a time. And when our Master explains what’s happening, we react as if he’s speaking Yalunka. We don’t understand a word he says.

Is your world wet and wild? God’s greatest blessings often come costumed as disasters. Some of you doubt it. How can God use cancer or death or divorce? Simple. He’s smarter than we are. He is to you what I was to four-year-old Amy. I met her at a bookstore. She asked me if I would sign her children’s book. When I asked her name, she watched as I began to write, “To Amy…” She stopped me right there. With wide eyes and open mouth, she asked, “How did you know how to spell my name?”

She was awed. You aren’t. You know the difference between the knowledge of a child and an adult. Can you imagine the difference between the wisdom of a human and the wisdom of God? What is impossible to us is like spelling “Amy” to him. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).

I keep taking Molly to the car wash. She’s howling less. I don’t think she understands the machinery. She’s just learning to trust her master.

Maybe we’ll learn the same.